Travel

We made our way along the path through the woods and struggled up a steep trail carved out by mountain bikes. Eventually the path flattened and we were on a low ridge, though still under the canopies of hornbeams and beech trees. We caught glimpses of a meadow in the sunlight. A single oak stood before … Continue reading →

People pay a lot of money for a restaurant table, hotel room or apartment with a good view, but prospect has it’s most dramatic effect as part of a sequence. The geographer Jay Appleton (1919-2015) famously advocated that people prefer views, scenes, paintings, and by implication, landscapes, in which there’s an element of both prospect and of refuge. We are programmed biologically … Continue reading →

The trams are running in Edinburgh, after 6 years of construction, stalls and turmoil. It’s a nice ride, described well in a recent post by blogger Gillean Somerville-Arjat: “It doesn’t shoogle or wobble and hurtle you about with sudden braking as the buses do.” I think of gliding down Princes Street on a tram as something like being in a … Continue reading →

I’ve just been reading anthropologist Tim Ingold’s book Lines: A Brief History (Routledge, 2007), and squaring it with my recent experience as a traveller on the Sousse to Tozeur Oasis rail line at the northern edge of the Sahara Desert. I’m reading the text as an e-book via the Kindle app on an iPhone. On the one hand the journey … Continue reading →